What LSU football coach Ed Orgeron said after the Tigers’ third fall scrimmage Saturday

BATON ROUGE, La. — The LSU football team took to Tiger Stadium for its third fall scrimmage Saturday morning, working on specialty situations.

After the scrimmage, LSU football coach Ed Orgeron spoke to the media, revealing some stats and giving updates on LSU’s injured players. SEC Country was on hand. Here are the quotes Orgeron said, as typed live by SEC Country.

What LSU football coach Ed Orgeron said:

We went about 70 plays apiece, covered a lot of situations. Goal line, red zone, 2-minute and overtime. Covered every special teams phase there is. Live kicks, live punts. Thought our guys did pretty well. Gotta make some decisions about who’s going to start on special teams.

I thought the offense came out and started fast. Hit us for a 70-yard touchdown from Danny to No. 7. I thought the defense came out in the second half and did a really good job of stopping the offense.

DJ Chark had three catches. Racey McMath showed up today with two catches for 25 yards. Jefferson had a big touchdown catch from Myles Brennan.

Williams had 17 carries for 60 yards. Edwards-Helaire had another good day. It was hard to tackle him today. A lot of first downs on second effort. He was 13 for 50. Guice was 7 for 48 in a limited role. Stevens was 4 for 21.

On defense we had a lot of sacks today. Seven recorded, could’ve been up to 10. Our pass rush was superb on third down. On first and second down we lost contain a bunch.

K’Lavon Chaisson had another good day. Devin White had eight tackles. Xavier Lewis had eight. Phillips and Taylor had seven tackles and a sack apiece. That’s about it on defense.

The offensive line today: We had KJ Malone, Garrett Brumfield, Will Clapp, Ed Ingram and Toby Weathersby, along with Lloyd Cushenberry at right guard. DJ Chark, Russell Gage and Derrick Dillon feel like our starters at wide receiver right now. Dee Anderson still not practicing.

Guice was in a limited role at running back. Everybody else did pretty well.

I thought Christian LaCouture had a pretty good scrimmage.

We were able to award Jonathan Rucker and Caleb Lewis scholarships. Tyler Shelvin is a partial qualifier. He used his redshirt academic year, but we’re allowed to have him. We’re glad to have him. I think he’s going to be a tremendous player for us in the future.

Monday will be Tell the Truth Monday and Tuesday we’ll start game planning for BYU. We’ve focused on us and getting better. I wish we could’ve practiced a little more in the heat this preseason camp. Hopefully this week it’s hot and we can practice in the heat all week and we can get more accustomed to it. It’s just the way the factors were.

All the backup quarterbacks have been sharing second-team reps. Not ready to make any decision.

We’re hoping we can go with Greg Gilmore and [Ed Alexander] at nose tackle. If we have to move someone in an emergency, we can. I think they’re going to share reps. Ed has battled some injuries. He’s a little bit overweight right now. We’re going to have to limit Ed’s reps because of that. But if we get him completely healthy, he’ll be a good player. Greg Gilmore is in shape. Lost a lot of body fat. I think it’s going to be a good year.

We wanted to go out there live. I do believe going against Matt’s offense gives our young linebackers an advantage. I think it tests their mental capacity to call the defenses. When people line up in vanilla offenses, it’s going to be easy on them.

It’s hard to do that. We haven’t named a starting quarterback yet. I believe that’s going to happen next week. We have to talk about our staff and have a big discussion about it tomorrow. But as far as Myles and Lowell, they’re going to be great quarterbacks of the future. Hopefully we’re going to play both of them this year, but I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do that.

I don’t think Arden’s going to play, but it’s not decided yet. You have to look at K’Lavon Chaisson, Ray Thornton and Andre Anthony as who’s going to play the B. There’s nickel discussions, safety discussions and a lot of special teams.

I think Cushenberry has the upper hand because he was in the spring. If we have to start somebody right now, I think it’s Lloyd.

We’ve got guys who go see other doctors and do what they have to do. We’re OK with it.

If we had Lowell in there, we run quarterback runs. When we have Myles in there, he drops back and throws the ball. They’re completely different quarterbacks and they do different things.

We want to throw the ball to our backs. We want to spread the ball around between our wide receivers, our running backs and our tight ends. As a defensive coach, we know that when you have backs who can catch the ball that brings another dimension to the game.

Obviously we’re very multiple. We can run the football. I think our play-action passing has improved. Our ability to throw the deep ball has improved.

A lot of the sacks were on third down. Some against the first team, a lot against the second team.

We have to use a rotation at nose tackle, so it doesn’t matter who starts. Greg is the starter. Once Ed gets completely healthy, he can take it over. But I don’t see that happening right now.

Mickey is a great young coach. Great recruiter. We hired Jerry Sullivan as a consultant. Today was his last day. Pete Jenkins recommended him. He may come back and visit us during the season, but today was his last day.

Today was a big day for kickers. Connor Culp made a 53-yard field goal today.

It’s a new schedule now. They start school. Typically the first day of practice after the first day of school is the roughest. You’ve got to get them refocused. I’m glad we’ve got a week of school and we can get him preparation.

Caleb Lewis: Here’s a young man who came to me during the summer. Always wanted to be a tiger. Players love him. He told me ‘Coach, I want to stay here, but I can’t make it.’ So I told him if I could make it, I would. Two scholarships came open, so I gave it to him.